We survived! And we even had fun, hosting our first at-home birthday party for Kajsa. Kajsa was thrilled to have 9 friends able to come celebrate her birthday… especially since it was a “Backwards, Upside Down, Wacky Party”. We sent out mirror invitations (you held the invitation up to a mirror to read it); kids were invited to wear items of clothing backwards if they wished; and we played some backwards games in addition to some “normal” games. Normal: Hide and Seek;

the cooler view of the cake

Backwards Kickball… run from 3rd to 1st base

The invitation

Abby…

the cake

Cake-Plotting

Backwards games: Kickball, Red Light/Green Light and Goose Goose Duck. As kids arrived they could color in a piece of paper with their names spelled backwards in block letters…. and for party favor bags we gave out silly putty, Tangle Toys, and some Scratch ‘n Sniff Stickers.

Sticking with the “Backwards, Upside Down, Wacky” theme, we had an upside down birthday cake. It was truly a team effort: Jim and Kajsa went shopping for ingredients, Kajsa helped stir, frost, and did lots of watching… and Thelma loaned me the cake pans, helped with the cake strategy, and stopped by several times to help out when I needed help. Thanks, team!! Clearly I’m not a cake decorator, but it was fun making this one.

I had hoped to do a lot more with the theme… eating cake under the table, for instance. And blowing up lots of balloons to hang from the ceiling. But time either got away from us (as in the balloon instance) or we thought better of the idea (eating under the table…. Abby would have loved all that people food at her level!).

Thankfully, our six year old is sometimes very understanding: after everyone left yesterday I sighed and said,

“Kajsa, I’m so sorry. We never even had time to blow up and hang all those balloons!”